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Thursday, 30 May 2013

Captain of Industry

At the same time,
he was standing, thrusting upwards with a great shard of perspex, a handy sabre
grabbed from the rubbish strewn across the squat.

Felt the
press of humanity, the closeness of so many bodies, their stink, the smells of
cooking flesh pressed down by the low ceilings, the psychic shock of change to
a mind not admitting to the first flush of middle age.

Simultaneously
he was alone with the stinking fat bastard.Ducked, weaved, feinted, then he slashed, and watched as the man looked
down with disbelief at the contents of his gut discharging, the purple and grey
slippage making its way down his front.Felt the tremor along the plastic.Don’t believe it, then.Makes no
difference.This is where it all ends,
an eleven year old boy sending you into the darkness.A thought crosses the face, the eyes change,
but before the man can yell and bring death swarming upon the boy, his throat
is torn out, and the boy is down his rat hole.

Where did
that come from?The man stands as though
he had never fallen.His face shows no
turmoil, no sign of confusion from his sudden fall, no emotion at living again
his first kill.Brushes his knees,
shoots his cuffs and strolls on like he owns the place.He doesn’t, but he owns so many places he is
used to it.

Chinese
faces everywhere, so different to the multi-racial slum he grew up in.He didn’t care.There was money to be made in Shanghai.
Always money in a port city.

He scanned
the scene about him as he walked.No
disturbance, everyone going about their business.No signs of violence, no sounds of
shots.But there was something very
wrong.He was alone.

How had he
fallen behind?How had his men pulled
ahead?He wasn’t part of a crowd.He owned a crowd.They were all there to serve him.He didn’t get forgotten.

So many
people.He had said it to Chen.“You’re crazy.What does China need with extra people?”

Chen had
done his angry head shake, like everyone was a fool, trying to annoy him.He was fun to bait.None of it was real.Nothing from the depths reached the surface
in either man.

“You know
the old stories about labourers dragging ships, swarms of them like ants?I don’t want them, I want boat designers and
captains and technicians.I want the
right tools for the job, not interchangeable ants.”

“Look at
them Chen.They’re like ghosts.White people like brown servants.They like little caramel people cleaning up
their shit.”

Chen
dismissed him with a wave.“Colour I can
change.They are like Monsanto
stock.People want clean.Free from disease.TB resistant.Servants are just a tiny part.This is the future.We don’t need
robots or AIs if we can impress skill and talent.Take a servile personality, and graft on
stolen skills and knowledge, in a strong GM body. Knowledge does not have to die.”

“Where do
you get the root personality?”

Chen
laughed, a deep rumble from a large chest.“Google.The trucks they send
around for the ground view of the maps.They copied and digitised a lot more than they knew in the back blocks
of India, Eastern Europe.When it gets
out, google trucks will be as popular as polio vaccinators in Pakistan.”

“So what do
you want me for?”

“This is
huge.I need partners in other
countries.People smuggling.Visa rackets.We need to get the stock rolling.”

I’ll think
about it.Don’t call me, I’ll call
you.It’s a pipe dream Chen , but I’ll
give it to you, when you dream, you dream big.Stock phrases flowed out as he left, while yuan signs were rolling
behind his eyes.Chen was right, this
was huge.

When the
jihadists had beheaded President Clinton and her cabinet, he had not understood
the reaction of an English industrialist, watching the newsfeed as their conference was interrupted.“How could they?”the man kept wondering, bewildered.He knew the man was not referring to their
audacity, or the reprisals that would follow, or what the man no doubt
perceived as the awfulness of the deed.(Impressed despite himself, his main reaction had been, how bad for
business.)He had been saved from his
confusion when a crass Australian caused an uproar when he remarked “That’s a
pity, I’ve always been a Chelsea supporter”.

Only later
did he realise the remark was directed at the physicality, at the brute
action.He had realised again his
advantage, that his competitors were not men who had spent their childhoods
beheading beasts and cracking open carcasses.If you had spent years drawing blades across throats and severing
spines, the only question was the appropriateness, not whether you could do the
deed.

They could
not be far ahead.There -he caught a glimpse of Randall’s shock of red
hair.

Something
was wrong.He could smell his
mother.The scent of her burning, her
uncoffined body on the pyre.Though he
reeled inside from these memories, he did not break his stride.The stink of burning flesh and scrounged broken
furniture, didn't that signify something?What was that a sign of?A stroke or cyanide poisoning?Bitter almonds or burned pencil shavings.Didn’t matter.He forced the random thoughts away.Something was very wrong.

That was when they came at him.

He killed
the first man in an instant.Reacted to
him as he sprang.He ducked, lifted his
shoulder, grabbed the man’s head, and with a pop separated the vertebrae.The man lay still, front down, face staring
at the ceiling.

Acceleration
was instant.He ran towards his body
guards.

He
froze.Chen had been right about the
colour.

He watched
himself walk away in the middle of his entourage, saw himself as no mirror had
ever shown.Peacock jacket.Wrap round neck ruffles.Crush orange hat.His clothes duplicated.Though he could not see them, no doubt they
had got it right, right down to his ostrich leather boots.A tenth of a second to admire himself, then
he wondered how they had done it.Had
they got to his stylist?He thought
about where he was.There’d be someone
in this complex who could knock up a duplicate of any garment in 15 minutes.

Chen had
copied him.Spliced him with some serf
personality and set him loose, easily dominated. Chen ready to run the empire he had built, by remote control.

Yet he had
escaped.He couldn’t be kept back.Their plan had failed.The second man reached him, and had his arm
dislocated, his cheekbone crushed, but he would live.Then the third, whose hand would never work
properly again.He ran.He would catch them, see this usurper face to
face.

The seventh,
eighth and ninth held him.He assessed
the situation, and relaxed, stopped wasting energy.They dragged him back.He had escaped once (though he could not
remember how), he would do it again.

The
tailor’s.The tailor himself standing at
the front of the stall, watching the excitement as they dragged him by.Perhaps the very one who had duplicated his
clothes.The full length mirror at the
front of the shop.Not placed there by
accident.He saw the reflection of his
face, emotionless, giving his enemy nothing.His fish white face, translucent jelly features.The veins almost showing through.Watched the face change.Recognition.Understanding.Dismay.

Despair.

He collapsed
into their arms, all resistance gone.

Not even
real.

There had
been no escape.They had just let him
out on a stroll.Gave him hope in order
to dash him when they took it away.Set
him up so that he could see exactly what he was.Showed him precisely how much control they
had, the risks they could take without fear.

Dragged like
a dead weight through hidden utility doors, into the centre of the building,
away from windows.The core that was the
real point of everything around it.Pulled across a gangplank into the tower that stood separate from the
rest of the construction, hidden from view by a real building that existed only
to camouflage.The walkway receded after
him, leaving a moat of air forty storeys deep.

He was the
copy.A model, a tool for problem
solving.They’d use him to keep a step
ahead in negotiations with the “real” him.Test out strategies, see how he responded.Role plays.Work shops.

He was not
grafted onto any peasant stock.There
was no servility bred into him.It would
skew their results.He felt the strength
inside.He was an important investment.They had copied him into a premium body.

His face
gave out the hopelessness they sought, that they had predicted.He was totally theirs.They had broken him.